Think you've been libelled by a website?
Anthony Dhanendran, Computeract!ve 27 Jun 2006
People who believe they have been libelled online will have to do some detective work before making a claim, the High Court has ruled.
Mr Justice Gray ruled that just because something has been published on a website, it's not possible to presume that 'substantial publication' has occurred.
He was ruling on the case of Ethiopian-born businessman Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, who sued a Swiss company for libel contained in reports published on its website. They were not seen by enough other people to make them libellous.
Because the reports were read by so few people, any damages that might be awarded would be so small that they would be vastly outweighed by the cost of the trial, so it would not have made sense to proceed with the case.
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